The training of whom?
by EscapingMe
Summary: One shot - human girl taken by the kin of an ancient, saved by him and trained but now who is training whom? Romance, part of a larger story not yet posted.


The door hissed closed with a locking click of finality. It sent a shiver down Beth's spine as she trembled, facing into the room with her back to him as she paused. The air was clean and crisp but still in its sticky humidity, the cloudy flog eddying around her knees as her pores exploded in sweat. She stifled a gasp as the sharp feel of it, pressing her lips together and closing her eyes. Her heart still raced from their fight in the kehrite, her palms slick and her mind whirling that she'd managed to anger such a huge, forbidding creature yet she only felt a small frisson of fear.

She hadn't meant to test his patience, which had always been exceedingly long and generous yet she couldn't bare the thought of actually drawing his blood, not in actuality. He'd wanted her to be fierce, showing no mercy in her strikes but she just couldn't do it. The first time she'd nicked his skin Beth had been tackled out of her concentration and into reality as the glowing green blood beaded and ran down, allowing him a rapid multi-strike counter defense that landed her on her back, breathless and disoriented.

It was unbelievable to her that she'd scored a hit at all and while she couldn't lie, she felt immense pride and justification she'd also been swarmed with so much more. So much… Beth shut her eyes tightly and listened in the sudden quiet, only hearing breathing, his and hers. He hadn't moved away from the door. He was as still as she was.

What could he be thinking? He'd wanted her to draw blood when she hadn't wanted to and when she did, he rejoiced while she agonized. The matter wasn't simple, didn't he understand that? To him, it was a superficial wound, another battle scar to scab over and wear but to her it was more. In her own way she'd marked him and deep inside, in the part of her that she refused to acknowledge, that meant something. But what?

Beth couldn't bear his silence and the tension.

"I'm sorry, K'arnak. I'm so sorry." _The enigma. _"I didn't mean…" she swallowed tightly, suddenly unable to speak. "I didn't mean to undermine you in front of the others. I swear on my own soul I didn't."

"You scored a direct hit," he rumbled moments later, voice tight with tension. "A minor victory but one to be proud of, for an Ooman yet you paled and smelled like death then ran from the kehrite in shame."

"Yes," Beth whispered.

"Why? Do you fear violence, blood shed?"

"No," she whispered again.

"Then do you fear repercussion? That I would punish you?"

"No!" She cried and spun around, her calloused hands fisted by her side as she trembled and looked up into his face. "No, I don't fear… that."

K'arnak trilled and tilted his head, his many rank rings chiming softly in the silence like prayer bells. "You ran," he stated and stepped closer, puffing himself up. He was so tall, yet when he set his shoulders back and expanded his chest he became her entire focus, her universe long before his musk reached her nose as it did now. Raw, virile male. Sweaty, earthy, spicey.

"Yes," Beth said, hesitantly. "I ran. I'm so sorry."

"Do not be sorry, Ooman. It is a sign of weakness. Explain why."

"No, it's…" Beth trailed off, catching her own words as she stared at him. Her neck always ached looked up at him but once she was caught in those tiger eyes she couldn't seem to care about it anymore, or about anything. Now was no different. When he was happy and care free, their color was the purest pale honey yet when he was angry, enraged as he was now, they were the darkest chocolate. They seemed to bend the light, natural or artificial amd Beth found that she couldn't look away. They gave away everything.

"It's not a sign of weakness, Ancient. Please, believe me." Her voice pleaded without her consent, breaking and fluctuating as she stood transfixed where she was, her will dangerously close to not being her own. The burning in her eyes worried her and she blinked, as a several wet tears spilled over to track down cheeks that were high with color.

K'arnak snarled, his mandibles flaring as he narrowed his eyes and stepped even closer in full combat posture, within striking distance with his own large clawed hands fisted at his sides and his wrist blades snicking in and out of their housing, intimidating. He crowded her, towered over her. Commanding, lethal, unpredictable and barely retrained as he grated, "It is weak to run from your enemy, to turn tail and leave. To pale at the sight of blood and feel remorse, to feel pity. I've trained you better than that!"

Beth immediately bowed her head and eyes to the ground, tensing, as sweat slicked down her spine and bloomed on her face. He didn't understand. God help her, he didn't have a clue. Feelings warred within her, feelings she herself didn't quite comprehend enough to ease his angry mood. She felt fear, confusion but something else… something hot, sticky and heady.

"You have, K'arnak. You have!"

"Then you will explain why," he growled, taking the final step to close the distance before reaching out to grab her chin and lift it. "Now."

His scent assaulted her like a siege on a fort, as it had for the past month. Flowing into her mouth like drowning water that she gasped in, filling her lungs like smoke that wouldn't exhale. The tears kept running down her face as she whispered, "It's not the weakness you think."

"Explain!" He barked, jerking her chin up another notch as he suddenly leaned down to put his face inches from hers. Her neck seized and her lungs froze, all while her heart beat double time as she stared with blurry eyes into his. The fear she felt icing her spine solidified a bit more. He meant business and she lacked the words. She'd shamed them both by running out like a coward, while all eyes were on them. God, what had she done?

"I…, " Beth choked out, blinking rapidly now to clear her vision as his grip on her lower jaw intensified, bordering on painful. It triggered more tears that she was helpless to stop and it took all of her energy to stay standing. Rather than reach for him as her impulse demanded, she fisted her clammy hands in the front material of her breech-cloth and struggled to think.

"Explain, Beh'th." He rumbled tightly, bring up his other hand to hug the back of her head against his palm, trapping her. Panic started to build in her gut, irrational and acidic until her legs trembled and she struggled in earnest to control the sobs that wanted to break free.

"I don't know how!" She choked out, feeling her lips tremble and peel back, wanting to sob even as she fought it. "I don't know how, Honorable Ancient. Please have mercy for my honor and yours, don't make me explain!"

"You will explain!" He barked again, a torrent of hot breath over her face as the Ancient yanked her closer, bumping their bodies together in a crash that might've given her whip lash yet he not held her so firmly. "You bear my mark on your cheek, not just my Clan's. They could demand answers but I out rank them, be thankful for my mercy in this matter for they would have none!" He bit out, jostling her head enough to cause a startled cry.

"You will explain or you will not leave this chamber, Beh'th. Do you need punished? Is that what you crave? Discipline, guidance, like a pup?" His thick finger reset on her jaw, working the hinges until her mouth opened as she groaned at the pressure. "What do you fear? What shames you?"

"Me," Beth whispered. "I fear… me. I shame… us both."

K'arnak clicked his upper mandibles, studying the Ooman before slightly tilting his head. The broad side of his tusks and the skin around them brushing Beth's face, he breathed deep of her scent with a slight tremor.

"I do not understand," he rumbled. "You must explain. Your scent confuses me. You fear a great deal, yet you say it is fear of self. You're stressed, excited and wary. Why? Why, Beh'th? Without your answer, I must proceed blind and I hesitate. I don't not believe your scents, not anymore. Why?"

Beth felt frozen, on the edge of a precipice and she feared to move. Her eyes were wide, shining with tears and her breath scissored in and out as she fought to come back to reality. She didn't know what she was feeling or doing, she didn't know what the right thing to do was. She'd always been honest but now, now it was so hard. Why? Because the time line for the end of the Ancient's line matched up to her own? Because she worried crossing boundries? Because she feared her own need for contact was weakness?

A year ago this wouldn't have been an issue. She was so new then, to the Ancient and his entire culture and where she potentially fit into his culture was a war zone but not anymore. He was her ally. Her guard, her protector in all ways, her friend, her confidant, her trainer, her mentor, her…everything. K'arnak had come to be her everything. Hg'ith his great grand son might have abducted her but it was K'arnak who had rescued her.

K'arnak who had intervened when she wasn't fed, when she was neglected to a corner in every room, when she was beaten for offenses that she hadn't even known she'd committed. She'd tried to make the best of her situation, tried to read Hg'ith's body language, his scents, his moods but she'd always failed. He was an arrogant Young Blood, brash and overly sure of himself in what he could handle and what he knew, hut humans wasn't one of them.

He'd saved her life, K'arnak, and she couldn't explain. He'd fought his own kin in a grand spar match for ownership of her and he didn't understand. He was patient, considerate, understanding, kind, firm and understanding in her training, warm even. She slept in his bed, his pallet of furs. His chest pressed against her back every sleep cycle with his arm curled around her. Yet he didn't understand. Beth almost buckled in despair.

"Please, K'arnak. I know I take liberties without addressing you but please, please I beg you to understand." Beth choked out awkwardly as he held her jaw tightly, forcing her to swallow noisily. "Please," she dropped back to a whisper as his lower mandibles fanned over her cheeks as she leaned into their touch, breathing in deep of his spicey meat scent. "Please."

"Explain, Beh'th." He rumbled again, softening slightly in his grip and tone as his mandibles caressed her cheeks. "Please."

The Yautja never begged, pleaded or otherwise stressed for an answer yet hearing K'arnak say the word threatened to undo her. Choking back another sob, she shakily reached out and unclenched her fists to rest them on his hips above his belt and loincloth. The dry, slightly leathery heat of his skin seared her palms and sent sparks of electricity through her. His muscles rippled.

"I'm sorry," Beth whispered, closing her eyes against his intense gaze. "When I knicked you, when I drew blood I was proud. I was." She admitted in a rush as her hands tightened against him, digging in. "But it's more than that, God forgive me, it's so much more. The scar you'll have, I earned and I gave you, yes. I'm proud of that. But it also felt like I… claimed you. I was good enough, finally, to hit you and I left my mark. You're… you're mine. I know that's stupid. I know that." She broke emphatically, sliding her hands around his sides to his lower back, digging in there.

"But to me it felt like," Beth hesitated, wetting her open lips. "It felt like I was finally worthy of you. That finally, I'd reached your level, barely but enough to see the light. I was good enough for once, as more than a student of mentor or pet or whatever. I was good enough… for you. That I… owned you somehow. I'm so sorry, K'arnak for my thoughts and motives, I'm so sorry! But when I saw your blood I got... I got crazed. I thought I could have you as I want you, finally and I thought everyone would know it, that they'd laugh or be disgusted or whatever. I couldn't control it, so I ran. I'm sorry."

K'arnak was silent for a long time, and Beth grew more nervous even as her confession relieved her of her internal struggle. It was out in the open now. The next chapter, she couldn't control but she sighed out a heavy breath an coasted her hands over him anyway. If she was to be punished or die, she wanted to touch him even if her eyes were closed.

Slowly, she traced her fingertips along the top of his belt to his front, kneading the hard wall of his obliques before her palms pressed flat against his abdominals and slid upwards, riding like a coaster over his ridged muscles while they trembled and flexed. Tracing scars, pressing in to massage knots of tension… she couldn't stop touching him and her own body reacted, igniting like a fuse up her spine. Biting back a soft moan, she sucked in her lower lip as her palms skated over his dry skin, up and out until she cupped his pecs. His flat nipples dragged against her and she shivered, feeling them harden as she pressed harder and dug in, gripping.

"Do you understand what I'm saying?" Beth whispered, her voice lower and huskier than before as she quickly became fascinated with the palm slick slide of her hands over his tight nipples, repeating the motion in a variety of patterns from up and down, side to side to circles which he seemed to respond to best. Her head throbbed as a hard ripple ripped through him and he burst out with a confused, spontaneous low growl.

The rumbling sound tripped and dipped at first, as if K'arnak couldn't even believe his control had slipped. All too soon though the growl evened out as if he'd caught himself yet instead of stopping it he let it go on and Beth physically felt the rush of feminine power explode from her loins.

It was madness, sheer madness that drove her on as she pressed harder with the circular motion, feeling how his rock hard nipples rolled around like tiny loose joysticks and how the minute scales of his skin seemed to lift up and gently abrade against her palms. His chest was moving as he breathed but the motion was tight and for a moment she felt a flair of irrational anger.

That pungent kick in her scent seemed to be trigger enough, because K'arnak rumbled, "You are angry, why?"

Beth wasn't even sure, her thoughts and emotions so jumbled so she stayed quiet despite his needling for precise answers adding to the fuel of her temper. When his two handed grip on her head tightened slowly and ominiously, she sucked in a sharp breath and her glazed eyes flew open. He was still inches from her face, his mandibles still spread yet instead of stroking her cheeks as they had before they now clamped down tight, startling her further and sending the raging infero between her thighs to new heights with this decidedly alien show of dominance and aggression.

"You will answer me, Beh'th." His voice lacked …something. Beth couldn't put her finger on what but something inside of her, deep inside screamed with knowledge and it responded instinctively as her nails bit into his skin and raked down until both his nipples were being pinched in her fingers. Around they rolled, were twisted, grazed and flicked with her thumbnails as she stared into his eyes. If they were chocolate brown before they were positively black now, reflecting her own breathless, pupil blown image.

"I'm angry," Beth found herself answering in a hush, "because I want what I can never have even though it's always right in front of me."

K'arnak's eyes seemed to sheen at that as myriad thoughts passed behind them too quick for Beth's mind to discern yet he never once stopped her ministrations in any way which was heartening and as she realized it it sent another heady bolt of lust racing through her veins and out her pores to perfume the air. K'arnak lost his train of thought then as the scent him stronger than it had before. His eyes seemed to unfocus, almost rolling back as he chuffed in great droughts of air and urged Beth forward until she was firmly wedged between his mandibles.

Distantly Beth knew that her slightly parted lips were now crushing against the front of his inner maw. That it was the individual elongations of his teeth that dented her mouth and his breaths that she was breathing. The sheer amount of carbon dioxide he exhaled into her was enough to make her light headed in an entirely new way and she helplessly moaned that she liked it.

"I want you," she pleaded. Her tongue licked out with a mind of its own, bold and confident to lave up his lower teeth and lightly catch for a moment on the points up top, nicking and drawing blood that was smeared up until she reached his gum line without any thought to the fleeting sting.

K'arnak jerked as if brought back to the present, leaning away but the tight hug of his mandibles on her face drug Beth with him until her neck extended and strained with the reach, making her moan a second time. "You have me," he rumbled haltingly as if more confused now than ever. "I am your guardian, your mentor—"

Beth struggled to understand him. His tusks weren't able to click so her implanted translator only caught partial conversions but it was enough to spike her anger again. Exhaling her own brand of growl, she slid her hands up to his shoulders and along the sides of his neck until she was grabbing hold of his head like he had hers. The thick dreadlocks forced her fingers wide as she cupped his skull in the back, pulling him closer to ease her neck as she leaned against his bent torso. The crush of her breasts to his chest almost made her drop to the ground as her hide top added friction.

"No," she grated out in a low voice that was entirely too forceful to be her own in this surreal situation. "I want you more than that." 

"You want my skull?" K'arnak ruminated, a kind of hoarse amusement in his voice as he struggled to puzzle out the Ooman in front of him. She was distraught over marking his body yet she bore his own mark on her cheek. She was angry over wanting what she couldn't have yet she already had it. They were a pair now, Yautja and pet. None would ever be arrogant or stupid enough to challenge him for ownership and she had no say in the matter until the Council weighed in when their schedule permitted due to her bearing the Clan mark. She was unmistakably aroused sexually yet the Ancient couldn't believe that it was him she wanted to mount her.

Not only were they different species but their bodies were entirely different. Mating worked the same way mechanically as it did for Ooman's but she was still Ooman and he was still Yautja. He could have his choice of Females while she had no one so it must be misplaced instincts making her turn her attentions on him. It made sense. He was an Ancient. The characteristics of his age alone would seem like a ripe prize to her, Ooman or not.

But now she wanted more than that. She wanted his skull? As amusing as the thought was it was the only logical conclusion he could draw. After one scored hit, a mere scratch, she thought herself skilled enough to best him on his way to Cetanu? "You are very arrogant indeed, Beh'th. One scratch does not mean you are a match for me. If you were to try for my skull you would lose. It would be your head on my wall. Perhaps you need yet another demonstration to show you the logic of what I say?"

Beth seemed to falter at that because her grip on his dreads loosened and she held her breath before whispering, "I don't want your skull, K'arnak."

"Confusing Ooman. Say what you mean, Beh'th. I scent your arousal. You are in heat and wish to be mounted. Your hormones are controlling you because there are no other Ooman males present. Is this not so?"

"No," Beth whined, tightening her grip on his dreads almost painfully plaintive as she swiped her tongue again over his teeth. "I want you, no one else. There could be fifty humans here with me and I'd still want you."


End file.
